The end of the year is always a time of reflection of what we have done and what we have left undone. And, of course, it’s time to start thinking about those resolutions for 2015 and what we will do differently.
Our New Year’s resolutions usually target minor vices – eat fewer snacks, drink less, stop smoking, exercise more – whatever your particular self-admonitions may be. But it is too easy to get lost in the particulars – and in the negatives.
In setting out our resolutions, we should first step back and take stock of what it is that we really want, what we consider the good life to be, and then think about how best we might achieve it.
Well-being Is More Than Just Being Well
Fellow anthropologist Arjun Appadurai encourages us to be driven by an “ethics of possibility” – hope, aspiration, optimism – and not just the “ethics of probability” – costs and benefits, risk management, and systematized rationalities. We can be pragmatic, but let’s not allow that pragmatism to kill our dreams of how things could be better.
I’ve spent the last few years studying what contributes to the good life – the elements of well-being – for folks around the world. I’ve talked to rural Maya coffee farmers in Guatemala and urban supermarket shoppers in Germany, as well as Americans from all walks of life. I’ve looked at notions of well-being in Mozambique, Brazil and China. I found that income is important, but not as important as we might first think. Health and security are also necessary, but insufficient, for living a fulfilled life.
Well-being, it turns out, is about more than just being well. It also requires strong family and social relations, a sense of dignity in our lives and fairness in our opportunities, and commitments to larger purposes.
For example Miguel, a 43-year-old Maya coffee farmer in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, I met during my research has benefited in recent years from the boom in high-end coffee in the US. He says that life is good right now – even if we might characterize his circumstances as extremely impoverished. He finds a dignity in owning his own land, in growing quality coffee that commands a decent price. He is committed to providing his children with more opportunities in life, and that endows his hard labor with a larger purpose.
Such large purposes may take many different forms. German shoppers who buy organic and fair trade products see this as a way of linking consumption to moral projects of ecological stewardship and social solidarity. Mastering a craft, political activism, even religious extremism – all are ways we give larger meaning to life.
